


Walkie-Talkies

by hideeho



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Season 2, rbficexchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 22:03:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4641798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hideeho/pseuds/hideeho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you dead yet?”</p><p>“Not that I’ve been told.”</p><p>A guy, a girl and a pair of walkie-talkies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walkie-Talkies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pashmina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pashmina/gifts).



> A treat for tungsten-illusionist / vorpalbladedwitch! Prompt 1: Braven and walkie talkies. Because sometimes it’s easier to confess when you can’t look them in the eye. 
> 
> All mistakes are mine.

As soon as they finish describing the mission Raven storms out of tent. (Or storms out as much as person can with one leg in a brace and the other threatening to give out beneath her at all the wrong moments.) It’s a suicide mission. The gains don’t justify the costs and as soon as they lay it out she knows exactly who will be the first to volunteer.

Who is always the first to volunteer.

She can’t decide if he’s still trying to prove something or is determined to die a martyr instead of the foot-soldier he still seems to think he’s seen as. This is why she hates history. Death and sacrifice become glamorized and sanitized with time, but death isn’t glamorous. Death is rotting flesh and the suffering of the living. They don’t have the luxury of time. They live in the here and now and she -- _they_ need him. Or not. They’ll figure it out as they always do, because what other choice is there?

And fuck him for making it necessary for them to figure it out.

If she uses a little more aggression with the hammer than necessary so be it. The pounding helps to drown out the thoughts in her head.

“Raven, you have to talk to him.”

Not the Blake sibling she was expecting, but maybe he knows not to talk to her when she has heavy objects in her hands. “No, I actually don’t.”

“Raven, _please_.” There is a fear in her voice that’s familiar and fuck her too. She wasn’t her brother’s keeper. So what if they've gotten closer over the last few months? They were both running low on options, that's all. 

“Hate to break it to you, but the Blake family isn’t so great at being told what to do.” That gets her a smile she hasn’t asked for as Octavia takes her hand in her own.

“He’ll listen to you.”

Maybe, but she isn’t sure what’s worse: what it means if he does or what it means if he doesn’t.

***

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Packing,” she snaps, ripping her wrist away from his hand to place an extra pair of wire cutters in her bag.

“Raven, the walk alone--”

“I can handle it,” she hisses, knocking past him on her way around her workbench. She’d drag herself if she had to.

“I know you can, but if you’re doing this to prove a point.”

“Oh, _please_! Not everything is about you, Bellamy.” She’s in his face now, finger stabbing at the center of his chest. He stands at least half a foot taller than her, but she juts out her chin and stands her ground. “Mount Weather figured out how to grow and store food year round. Who better to figure out the machinery? Some of us actually plan on being around for winter.”

If he comments on the way her voice hitches she’ll call him a liar.

“I’m doing this to keep all of us safe.” He has the audacity to look like he means it.

“Bullshit,” she snarls, pushing him back a step. “You’re doing this for you. What is it? Do you like the adrenaline? The hero worship? Think that for every life you save you’ll make up for one you took? Think when you even the score you’ll be handed a prize? Well you won’t!”

For a moment he looks angry enough to hit her, but rage gives way to defeat and she hates him for it.

“If you want to keep punishing yourself that’s your own business, but we need you. Don’t punish us, too.”

“Raven, I’m not-- I’m coming back.”

“Oh, well, be sure to tell that to the dilapidated mine where there might be weapons before it caves in on you. I’m sure it will do its best to accommodate you.”

“You’re making a point, I get it. But I know you, Raven, you never would have agreed to go up there--You’ve _refused_ to go back up there all this time. Don’t do this because of me.” He knows her thoughts on Mount Weather; still has a scar on his cheek from when he tried to wake her up from a nightmare about the place. She knows he feels the same way, but today is a day for making stupid fucking decisions for the greater good. He’s not the only one who knows how to sacrifice.

“I’m not! I’m doing this for _me_. You think I want to sit here and wait to learn you’ve all died in a cave-in? Or from carbon monoxide poisoning? Or from whatever hell-beast has probably been cooking down there? There are better ways for me to use my time.”

The fact she knew this would get his attention didn’t hurt, but she’d be damned if he took credit for her decision.  

He looks like he wants to ask her not to go, but he doesn’t. Maybe he knows she’ll ask the same in return. Maybe he knows they’ll both leave disappointed.

She presses her latest project against his chest and he stares at in confusion. “Magnetic induction equipment.” She knows he has no idea what she’s talking about, but she finds satisfaction in the look of confusion on his face. “Rocks absorb radio waves. This will ensure your walkie-talkies work in the mine. I’m still working on the carbon monoxide detector, but you’ll have it before you go. This way when you die you can only blame yourself.”

He hesitates before speaking and she finds satisfaction in that too. “Raven, if something happens--”

“I’ll be sure to tell your corpse I told you so.”

He looks like he might do something stupid like kiss her. His hand is soft on the curve of her hip and he’s lowering his head slowly, but if he kisses her now she might do something stupid like tell him she loves him and there’s no point if he’s going to get himself killed.

She’s learned her lesson about loving someone she can’t have. 

She doesn’t let him kiss her, but she’s palming the front of his pants and it isn’t long before he grows hard beneath her touch.

She doesn’t forgive him for being an idiot when he eats her out from underneath her workbench, but she doesn’t want to hit him quite as much, either.

***

She leaves camp before Bellamy and it’s better that way. There are no goodbyes or promises they can’t keep. He has his life and she has hers. The fact they intersected for a time meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

If she checks in on him on the walkie-talkies every hour after he starts his mission it’s because she’s bored. (Or because Mount Weather feels like a tomb that might suffocate her alive.)

**8:00a.m.**

“Are you dead yet?”

“No, not yet.”

**9:00a.m.**

“Are you dead yet?”

“Not that I’ve been told.”

**10:00a.m.**

“Are you dead--”

“ _Stop asking that_!”

“Damnit, Bellamy, why does Miller have your radio? Keep control of your supplies. Unless you’re dead and Miller looted your body.”

“If I kill him will you stop?” Bellamy’s laugh echoes in the background.

**11:00a.m.**

“Are you dead yet?”

**11:07a.m.**

“Bellamy?”

**11:09a.m.**

“ _Bellamy?_ ”

“We’re a little busy climbing here. Careful, Reyes, it almost sounds like you care.”

“Fuck you.”

**11:59a.m.**

“Still alive.”

**12:00p.m.**

“How about now?”

At precisely 12:37 in the afternoon she hears her  radio come alive and her stomach falls to the floor. For a brief moment she considers throwing it against the wall so she doesn’t have to know what he’s about to say, but she believes in knowing what she’s working with.

“Looks like you get to say I told you so.”

She’s clutching the device so tightly her fingers are white and for a brief moment she wonders if she’s strong enough to crush it with her bare hands.

“What did you do?” She means to sound accusatory, but unless she is mistaken it sounds an awful lot like fear.

“Cave-in.”

“Casualties?”

“One. Miller and I have looked for a way out, but we can’t tunnel out without causing more to crumble down.”

She closes her eyes for a moment; thinks of all the ways she can’t help him. Thinks of all the ways she couldn’t help him even if she was there. She can’t climb and scale rock. Can’t blow loose the stone without risking more harm to them.

She watched Finn died, she couldn’t listen to the same happen to him.

“Lucky for you, I figured you’d go and get yourself in trouble so I put a tracking chip in your walkie-talkie. I’ll let Monty know to send a team out after you. Don’t waste any air. No big speeches, no smart comments, nothing. They are going to find you and then I’m going to kill you.”

“Rav-”

“ _No_ talking. You’re going to sit there and think about how you’re not going to be such a reckless idiot in the future. Because people depend on you, Bellamy. People who love you. People who actually want you to be around even though you’re the biggest pain the ass in the entire galaxy. The entire galaxy and that includes Murphy.”

She’s not getting choked up. It’s static. It’s this place. It’s the crippling fear that they’re going to get there too late.

“Rav-”

“ _SHUT UP_! I know, okay. I know. I love you, too.”

***

They dig them out at 3:48a.m. Two died in total. They found weapons, but they were buried in the rumble.

Raven returns to the camp four days later.

When she arrives at his tent he is bruised and battered; his body a scattered painting of black, purple and yellow. He broke two ribs and dislocated his shoulder. He was lucky.

“You look like shit.”

“I know.”

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

“I know. How was Mount Weather?”

“Turns out I’m a fucking idiot, too.”

He reaches for her hand when she sits down beside him and for once his movements are as stiff as her own.

“You told me you loved me.” He had to go and ruin a perfectly good reunion by bringing that up.

“Figured it was the only way to shut you up.”

“You never let me finish what I was going to say.”

“Silly me for trying to prevent you from dying of oxygen deprivation.”

“Are you going to let me finish or not?”

“If you must.”

“Raven,” he says solemnly, bringing her hand up to his lips. They’re chapped and rough, but his breath on her skin is the sweetest thing she has ever felt. “I’m not dead yet.”

He smirks and she’d smack him if she weren’t already kissing him.

(Later he tells her he loves her.)

(Later she tells him of course he does; she’s awesome.)


End file.
